Poor Shot

Get some coaching from a reputable CPSA or BASC accredited coach. 2 or 3 sessions with a good coach could save you a years worth of just turning up and trying to improve on your own. Getting a good coach is the hard part as there are plenty of accredited coaches out there who will happily take your £75 an hour for as long as they can all while teaching you nothing. A good gauge of a coach is their achievements in the sport. I wouldn't see anyone who isn't or hasn't previously been a AA or AAA sporting shot for example or won British/ World stage competitions. You can shoot 30/50 so you can clearly shoot but its consistency that counts and being taught the pick up point, hold point and shoot point method and how read a target will go a long way towards ensuring that you're getting 9-10/10 on each stand rather than 6-7/10. Also helps massively to spread your shooting around different grounds. Being able to shoot a 45/50 on a ground you shoot week in week out where the targets don't change greatly isn't that much of an achievement but being able to turn up at any registered sporting event and put an 80+/100 score in consistently will put you in upper half of the score sheet on any ground you go to. As mentioned above, trying different disciplines will also help a lot. Skeet, trap etc are all quite specialised parts of what you may see on a sporting layout and will help with fast, close crossers or quartering going away targets. Similarly to yourself, I've been shooting just over two years. Back last year my scores more than doubled in a three month period because I spent some time with a quality coach and started to travel around and see more than your average Sunday morning ground where having a looper and crossing target on the same day is a talking point. I found another shooter from the Sunday morning shoot I was going to who also wanted to progress, threw ourselves in at the deep end and starting attending registered shoots. We may have started at the very bottom of the score sheet with less than 50% averages but after a season are both comfortably above 70% averages and have won class prizes etc.

The Franchi Affinity will be a completely different gun in terms of quality, feel, handling and reliability. Saying that it is almost 3 x the price new so I would expect it to be 3 x the gun. I switched from a Hatsan Escort to an ATA Venza last year. The Hatsan was ok and a good tool for a job but it was low quality and at times unreliable. When your using a gun on a marsh where you may only get a handful of opportunities each trip then having the second shot miss-feed randomly is unacceptable. In comparison the ATA is on another level despite being in the same price bracket. It handles really well, has a clean and crisp trigger break and so far has been 100% reliable.

That's next on the agenda.. Once we are all stuck using steel the complaint will shift to the millions of pieces of plastic being shot about the countryside. We'll then have to shift to bio degradable wads only and we'll all take another shafting in cartridge cost as a result. There is plenty of noise about plastic pollution at the moment but at least we have a choice whether we use plastic, fibre or bio degradable wads. When we have no choice and are trapped using steel with bio wads then we'll see even basic cartridges for clay target shooting reaching over £500 a thousand and most will give up. It's the thousand cuts and unintended consequences that those who wish to see all forms of shooting disappear happen.

To add to my earlier post I shot my first FITASC today. Squad left the club house at 9:30 and finished shooting at 14:30. 5 hours to shoot 100 birds is a bit much IMO and a 40 minute break between parcours 3 and 4 meant I was going into 4 cold and missed a few of the first singles as a result. It was a reasonable (by FITASC standards) £60 for targets only. I could have easily drunk more than £60 away in a pub in 5 hours but I don't drink so the money has to go somewhere. I only managed to semi pre mount twice which I thought was going to be real issue throughout the day as I mainly shoot english sporting. Lucky the refs were a pair of planks and missed both incidents. An overall enjoyable experience but super sporting is still my favourite of the clay shooting disciplines.

A reply from United Utilities to the auto generated email sent via the Countryside Alliance. It's written confirmation of what many knew already 'we aren't interested in shooting leases anymore, planting trees and selling carbon credits is more profitable'. There really is a skill to writing so many words that mean so little. Thank you for contacting us to raise your concerns about the United Utilities’ updated land strategy. Building on decades of successful habitat restoration, we recently reviewed the way we manage our land to ensure we are fully focused on using our catchments to manage water quality, quantity and mitigate flooding, which are of strategic importance to us as we respond to the challenges of climate change. Addressing these challenges requires a step change in our approach to help ensure a fully resilient ecosystem in which wet moorlands and biodiverse woodlands can improve catchment resilience by slowing the flow of water and improving water quality and retention – this is the primary reason we own this catchment land. Following that review and to ensure we can focus on those areas, we will not be renewing shooting leases where we own the rights. This follows a decision made some time ago not to issue any such leases on a long-term basis. Stepping away from leasing our shooting rights, as those leases come to their natural expiry date over the next few years, provides an opportunity to work with stakeholders to change the land management approach and support the delivery of this long-term objective for increased catchment resilience. We remain committed to working with others, to accelerate the restoration and rewetting of our peatlands and the biodiversity of our woodlands. We believe this will help unlock other opportunities to deliver a richer and more diverse approach to habitat management, conserving and improving biodiversity, including protected species, while also developing skills and jobs. We see this as an extension of our catchment management work which has been so successful in other parts of our region. Our updated land strategy affects 24 licences where we have shooting rights within specific catchments. We are working through this transition with those who are affected by this change as the leases come to their natural end and we remain committed to working with others to help address climate change risks such as wildfires and droughts whilst improving biodiversity. Many current land management techniques will continue and these will form part of new plans, developed and delivered with stakeholders and partners, providing new jobs and economic benefits for those who work in our catchment communities.

The countryside alliance will send one on your behalf. All they need is your name, address and permission to do so. Takes seconds. Likely ******* into the wind for the reasons we've all highlighted in this thread but what's a few seconds while your taking a **** or eating lunch staring at your smartphone?

Is this as much to do with anti-shooting sentiment within United Utilities as it is to do with the fact that a lot of money can made on re-wilding schemes, carbon credits etc? As is happening with most of rural Scotland at the moment? If its the later then any challenges will do little as shareholders will always prioritise this over the relative pittance they must get from sporting leases.

That's because the whole fat = bad thing is a bit of myth and in the USA at least, has been badly smeared by those who have an interest in selling sugar in order for them to be able to continue to sell large quantities of sugar while fat takes the rap for the obesity crisis. It's all about the amount of calories you consume vs how much you use on a day to day basis. That's not to say that all fats are good because they aren't. There is around 9 calories in a single gram of fat so it wouldn't take all that much to send you spiraling over your daily calorific requirements. That being said, it would probably be quite hard to consume 180-200ml of fat when using it to fry meat and vegetables as is traditional in an Asian diet. I would assume that the bulk of the oils used are drained, retained and re-used for the next meal. The fat consumed vs how much is used is probably minimal. The Asians you refer to probably move a lot and eat relatively little compared to a general western lifestyle of large periods of inactivity and consumption of lots of processed foods. A Mediterranean diet is broadly similar with lots of olive and nut based oils consumed but with a more active lifestyle and probably smaller/ less portions. In my local takeaway, the workers in the back who do the heavy lifting are lot leaner than the two girls who sit out front taking orders.

There will no doubt be competition entry and local/ nation org levies within that but yes, FITASC is a very expensive way to shoot some clay discs. They would do well to remove the multiple breaks and shoot all 100 birds over 4/5 stands in one go as you would on a super sporting course. You could also change to a ref per stand rather than a ref per squad layout and get more people through the course in the same time. Part of the high cost is paying for a ref to chaperone a squad of six to shoot 100 targets over 4-5 hours. With that being said, I am going to shoot the Pro One challenge in a few weeks at £70 per entry for 120 sporting targets. Hoping to at least get a Hull branded hat thrown in with that one.. 😅

There are plenty on ebay under the search of 'rimfire targets'. Make they are 6mm and/or hardox steel.

I manage a team of design and CAD staff for a specialist electrical company and despite our company being well above the industry average in terms of salary, we still have a few staff that are working part time jobs in evenings and on weekends. It's mostly for specific goals such as mortgage deposits and not to make ends meet. Not surprisingly, they all live in the south east of the UK where an average home can be 10-15 times the yearly salary. Must be quite disheartening for a young person to be earning a reasonable wage (approx £40k for most of them) and being near to the top of salary you can expect for your given skillset and still having to wait tables in the evening to even get your foot on the housing ladder. With regards to MPs and second jobs, it's where they make their money. Do you think that someone would take on a position like PM for only £160k P/A? They do it for the cushy C level and advisory positions that follow where the earning potential is in the millions of £'s per annum. That's on top of the after dinner speaking and events they will also do when in seat and in retirement. Take a look at the absolute **** we have working in parliament at the moment and imagine that a block was put on any additional earnings. Westminster would be a ghost town overnight and then the real morons and losers would get into positions of power (like the Senedd but worse). IMO, positions like PM etc should be paid at the same rate that a CEO of FTSE 100 company would earn. Standard MPs should be paid in line with what most top level officials would earn. Only then will we start to see real talent take on these positions and not psychopaths with daddy issues etc like we have now.

Thanks. I will be in touch to confirm receipt. 👍

You'd have roughly, if not a little more shot in the 16 gram steel cartridge as you would in the 21 gram lead cartridge. I've not seen anything advertised on this on LE's website so perhaps they are a special produced only for Orston shooting ground? I can see 24g or 28g of 6 or 7 steel shot with a composable plastic wad becoming the norm for clay shooting over the next few years, even if target shooting is given an exception from the lead shot ban. Having used a 28g 7 steel clay cartridge in the past I'd say that it wouldn't be too much of an issue either, apart from the eyewatering prices that they will be. They still broke targets, even 50 yard battues and side on crossing targets.

Just an paid add for Aimpoint... It goes against everything you will have been taught in how to shoot a shotgun. You don't ever really look at the bead just mount, get the target in your sight picture with whatever lead you perceive you need and pull the trigger. If the gun fits and all that then you should hit what you're shooting at. It could be useful on a semi or pump using slugs for wild boar or driven large game like they have in the Nordics but no use in the UK IMO.

I had one earlier this year following a house move to both check that my security arrangements were adequate and complete a check of arms owned/ registered etc.. They are going to want to see each and every gun and inspect the serial numbers compared with what is on your certificates so make sure you have adequate clear space to lay down all of your guns as/when requested. This makes it easier than passing each gun out from the cabinet in turn if you have 10+ guns spread across two cabinets etc. It would be good to check the serial numbers yourself and compare them against what is written on your certificate. Make sure that they are all correctly logged with the right numbers in the right order prior to the visit (we discovered that an RFD had recorded a serial number incorrectly on my spot check that no one, including the FA dept themselves, hadn't noticed). If you've had any new guns since your last renewal or check then it would be handy to have the paperwork that the RFD provides along with any evidence that you had submitted it to the FA Dept (printed emails and read receipts etc) to save the ball ache of being accused that you hadn't informed them of a new purchase etc.. They may well have been given an old copy of your certificate to attend with so this always helps. Other sensible things like moving that recycling bag with 10 Budweiser bottles in from outside of the front door lest they question your current alcohol consumption vs what you may have previously stated on an application. Having the keys to your cabinets in your pocket ready for the visit rather than having the FAO observe you retrieving them for their location etc.. If you want them in and out in as little time as possible then don't put the kettle on or offer a hot drink. Last guy was here for over 2 hours (based on a 15 minute appointment) talking about how bad the previous season had gone for him and his game syndicate.

Given that steel is roughly a 1/4 less dense than lead they probably have a similar pellet count to the lead 21g alternative. I'd be interested in giving them a go if the price was right but as they have a biodegradable wad and are a new product then I'm guessing that they will be a lot more costly than a standard 21g lead fibre cartridge.

1 crow today. 934

Another three today from the feeders. 1711

5 yesterday from the pheasant feeders. Like squirrel city there now the feeders have been filled again. 1704

The Senedd is a place for those who pretend to have an education and intelligence but would struggle in an other real world job that doesn't involve asking 'Do you want fries with that?'. I would doubt that they have thought that far ahead and just see Fieldsports = Bad and must be banned. Once that's done they'll move onto the next thing that a teen with blue hair and hairy armpits has tweeted at them. Next on the agenda will be farming and compulsory purchasing of massive amounts of farmland which will be handed over to trusts to plant trees or start Llama walking businesses. After that will be anything involving motors, noise or any slight inconvenience to anyone. Motor racing, Moto X, clay pigeon shooting, target shooting, mountain biking, green laning etc. It will all go because the Welsh gov seems to be focused solely on what a very vocal minority screams at them on social media.

Already in motion. There's a very small minority of luvvies types in Wales who want anything involving an animal banned. Welsh government seem all too happy to latch onto this.

Nope, not with the Welsh Government. There has been a massive reaction to the proposed blanket 20mph speed limits in Wales, enough so that a petition held by the Senedd was established. The petition quite quickly surpassed the required amount of signatures to be debated within the Senedd, over twice that in fact, before it was closed early for debate. Having read the transcript of the debate it is quite obvious that the Senedd had no intention of discussing anything other than the fact that the petition had taken place and to note this fact. No debate took place surrounding the validity of the imposing the of limit or whether or not the Senedd should take another look at it considering the widespread disagreement of the public and vote for a second time. In short - 'Do whatever the **** you like with petitions and all that ********, we've made a decision without any form of consultation with the public and we're sticking with it whether you plebs like it or not'

If they were actually Pro Ones and not just that age old line "same spec as (premium cartridge) but without the markings" then it goes to show just how cheaply cartridges can be made, distributed and sold. I very much doubt that these cartridges were sold at a loss considering that they'd have easily sold at £200+ per thousand and at a time where we are still seeing shortages of supply. Every time I've been into Avalon Guns they have been 15%-20% more expensive than any of my local RFDs for cartridges so I doubt they'd be as generous as to give away those cartridges for cost.

I can only imagine £160/1000. When I started shooting back a few years ago you could just about find Eley Selects or Fiocchi Litespeeds for £195 - £200 a thousand. Same cartridges are now £260+. At £160 I'd up my shooting to 3 times a week. UK is crying out for a boggo basic cartridge at less than £200/1000. It would be an instant sell out and the most popular cartridge at shooting grounds overnight. Hull probably aren't even first or second in that supply chain either. Plastic wads (as well as hulls, shot, primers, powder components, etc) are likely made in the third world then resold by someone like cheddite to the cartridge manufacturer who assemble them into a cartridge which will then (in certain cases) go via a wholesale reseller to your local gunshop. Each one of those will be putting anything from 5% - 50% markup on the product.

An unexpected reply from the Plaid Cymru representative this late in the day. I've posted below, lots of waffle and kind of sounds like they are telling us what we want to hear with enough caveats to renege on it should they ever see power. Thank you for reaching out to Plaid Cymru regarding our party's policy position on the release and shooting of game birds. We appreciate your interest in this matter and would like to provide you with a stock response that outlines our stance. Plaid Cymru recognizes the cultural and economic significance of game shooting in Wales. We understand that it can contribute to rural economies, support employment, and provide recreational opportunities for many individuals. However, we also believe that it is essential to adopt a balanced and sustainable approach to this activity, taking into account various considerations. First and foremost, Plaid Cymru emphasizes the importance of animal welfare. We believe that the treatment and welfare of game birds should be a priority, ensuring that their breeding, rearing, and release practices adhere to stringent standards. It is crucial to minimize stress, suffering, and any negative impacts on the natural ecosystem. Furthermore, we advocate for the conservation of biodiversity and the protection of habitats. Plaid Cymru supports the responsible management of shooting estates to ensure that they do not harm local ecosystems, flora, and fauna. We believe in promoting sustainable practices that safeguard the balance between game shooting and the environment. In addition, Plaid Cymru recognizes the importance of consulting and engaging with local communities, including conservation organizations, farmers, landowners, and relevant stakeholders. We believe that decisions regarding the release and shooting of game birds should be made in collaboration with these groups to ensure a comprehensive understanding of local perspectives and concerns. Plaid Cymru also supports measures to address any illegal activities associated with game shooting, such as the persecution of protected species or the use of prohibited methods. We believe in enforcing existing legislation and implementing effective monitoring and enforcement mechanisms to prevent any unlawful practices. In summary, Plaid Cymru supports the release and shooting of game birds in Wales, recognizing its cultural and economic significance. However, we advocate for a balanced approach that prioritizes animal welfare, biodiversity conservation, community engagement, and the prevention of illegal activities. By striking this balance, we aim to ensure the long-term sustainability and responsible management of game shooting in Wales.